Fujitsu today announced the availability of its 2 Mbit Ferroelectric
RAM (FRAM or FeRAM) memory chips, which the company claims is the largest capacity
FRAM in volume production in the world. The memory product have the same
electrical characteristics and use the same TSOP-48 package as Fujitsu's 1 Mbit
FRAM products, equating to double the capacity over previous chips. Sampling
price of the chips is set at 2,000 Yen ($16.91 USD).

FRAM is a non-volatile memory that uses a ferroelectric film
as the capacitor for data retention and betters flash-based RAM with faster data
writing, lower power consumption and higher number of write cycles.

Fujitsu says that FRAM could be used in office equipment to store
event counts, or store various parameters and log at every event, without
concern for the number of write cycles. FRAM
allows 10 billion read/write cycles, which corresponds to writing 30 times a
second continuously for 10 years. Also, FRAM can store data for more than 10
years without a battery.

Other ideal uses of FRAM could be in car navigation
systems, multi-function printers, measuring instruments – anywhere non-volatile
memory is being used to store various parameters, record operating conditions
of equipment or security information.

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